Page 23 of Yours to Lose
Me
Maybe on my next day off.
Jo
Today.
Me
I don’t have time for that. My brothers are here visiting.
Jo
Take them with you. You have three brothers, right? It’ll be a good bonding experience. If you’re feeling adventurous, you get extra credit for taking a picture with one of the characters that walks around Times Square.
The Naked Cowboy is preferable, but any character will do.
“Holy fuck—Jordan are you smiling?”
I jerk my head up at my brother Noah’s voice, fumbling my phone and recovering it just before it lands on the floor. Noah is leaning against the doorway between the kitchen and living room, coffee mug in hand and smirk on his face. “I didn’t know you remembered how to do that.”
“I’m not,” I mutter.
“Oh, you definitely were,” my youngest brother Cooper says, strolling out of my second bedroom in plaid pajama pants and a T-shirt. “I’ve been peeking out of the bedroom for the last ten minutes, and I saw you smile more in that time than I’ve seen you smile in two years.”
Fuck. Was I? Maybe. Probably. Leave it to a twenty-seven-year-old hurricane of energy, torn jeans, and pink sneakers to be the first person to get me to smile in two years.
In the three weeks I’ve been back from Pittsburgh, I’ve been texting with Jo. A lot. For the first few days after our museum run in, it was her texting me, and me either ignoring the text, or texting back the shortest responses I thought I could manage without sounding like a total asshole.
Then, about a week after I got back to New York, a package showed up at my door. It was a small box filled with tiny pieces of multi-colored fabric, each about the size of a band aid and covered in different patterns. The note just said,For Dippy. Keep him authentic. Send pictures.
This is exactly the kind of insanity I avoid now that I have very little patience and even less of a sense of humor, but for some reason I didn’t want to let Jo down. So, for the last two weeks, at some point every day, I put a new scarf around the little dinosaur’s neck, and I text her a picture. And if I bought a small accordion file to organize all the tiny scarves? Well, that’s between me and the cashier at the office supply store around the corner.
The pictures lead to Jo’s particular brand of text messages, which I’m learning swing between fascinating and wildly unhinged. And they always end with her giving me some kind of homework assignment that requires me to go somewhere I’ve never been or do something I would never ordinarily do.
And yeah, I guess I could probably say no, but then I remember how talking to her in the rock room was the most normal I’ve felt since Allie died. And how she didn’t get weird or uncomfortable when I mentioned Allie’s name. Or assume mentioning Allie’s name means I’m on the verge of a mental breakdown and immediately try and cheer me up.
Sometimes I just want to say the name of the woman who was my entire world for five years, and Jo somehow got that without me having to tell her. So when Jo sends me on a random field trip around Manhattan, I go do whatever weird thing she asks me to do.
“So, what is it that has you smiling?” Noah asks, dropping down on the couch next to me.
I eye his mug, thinkingdeflect. “You made coffee in my kitchen and didn’t pour me one?”
He scoffs. “You’re not in the throes of grief anymore. Get your own coffee.”
To anyone else, what he said might seem callous, but to me, it’s a huge fucking relief, and from the way Noah looks at me, he knows it. For years, everyone has treated me with kid gloves, and to some extent, my friends still do. But not my brothers. They may be annoying and overbearing most of the time, but I can’t deny they’ve expertly ridden the waves of my confusing and ever-changing emotions over the past two years.
“I’ll get it,” Cooper says, heading into the kitchen.
“So, the smile?”
I narrow my eyes at Noah. “Do you ever give up?”
He scoffs. “It’s like you don’t even know me. Anyway, if you didn’t want to share your life, why did you even invite us to come visit you?”
“I didn’t invite you, asshole. You just texted mebrothers’ weekendand a date.”
He shrugs, propping his legs up on my coffee table and leaning back on my couch like he doesn’t have a care in the world. And honestly, it’s entirely possible he doesn’t. Never has there ever been a more cheerful guy than Noah Wyles. “We don’t really do invitations in this family. We just show up. We like it that way, and it’s not like you ever do anything, anyway.”
